Last year, Arielguest blogged at Feministe and changed the way I think about maps, geography, the internet, community, and how they interact in a collective space. One of my favorite collective geography projects she facilitated here was called “From Strength to Strength,” a collective remembering of places where we felt strong and did brave things. It was rather profound, I thought, and many of your stories moved me to tears.

I want to revisit Ariel’s project, this time with a new theme: What is the most magical place you know? What makes it so? How does it inspire you?

1) You need to be logged into a Google account — any Google account — to edit the map. If you are worried about anonymity and do not have a throwaway Google account, please email me: fauxDELETETHISPARTrealtho at gmail dot com(munism).

2) Click on the map pictured above. Note that it does encompass the whole world. I can’t figure out how to get it to zoom out to the whole world without breaking the embed code; PLEASE do not let Google Maps’ US-centrism make our map similarly US-centric.

3) Click that little “Edit” button.

4) Some tools will pop up in the map window. Select the blue marker, and drag it to where you want to leave a point. Tell the story in the window! Tell us about it! What happened?

5) If you want to give it a funny or custom marker, click on the picture of the marker in the box where you add text, and it will give you the option to choose amongst Google’s options or even to upload your own.

Please feel free to play and edit. I will be checking the map over the weekend, so please comment or email if you have issues adding your contributions. I can’t wait to read your stories.